


Advanced Survival Games

by newyorktopaloalto



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Accidental Telepathy, Alien Culture, Alien Planet, Developing Relationship, Falling In Love, Getting Together, M/M, Season/Series 01, Telepathy, away mission
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2019-10-14 20:03:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17515097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newyorktopaloalto/pseuds/newyorktopaloalto
Summary: There was something strange between Trip and Reed.Planet H60-317F would only push Trip's belief of that further.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Post 1x16 (Shuttlepod One). I figured that for my first Reed/Tucker fic, it would be an apropos episode to spin-off from. Special thanks to Renee, my invaluable sounding board for this! 
> 
> Disclaimer: Don't own ST: ENT, so please don't sue. (I do own the aliens the come in later, but whatever). 
> 
> Thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

“So what, you think we have some kind of 'rapport' or whatever now on account of our almost dying together?” 

“Don't you?” 

Trip shot a dirty look at the Archer who, to the captain's credit, managed to exude a perfectly detached professionalism; Trip blamed T'Pol entirely for that particularly deft maneuver—he knew that Archer had never been able to keep a straight face before meeting the Vulcan and being forced into more subversive means of normal go-arounds. 

“I would _not_ go so far as to say anything like that.” The denial came out of his mouth automatically and Trip felt a fission of guilt at the words because he understood that Reed had shown more of himself to Trip in that shuttlepod—threat of death or no—than he had for anyone else on Enterprise. 

In that, then, he felt a sort of kinship with the tactical officer than he would have otherwise thought possible—thought of imminent death more than enough to establish a camaraderie that would seem otherwise unattainable. A little uncomfortable, Trip tried not to think about the fact that, if not for the pod malfunction, it was more than likely that their sniping at one another would have continued in such a vein that more closely resembled actual annoyance than the begrudging humor Trip now saw his and Reed's bickering as—or at least, as could be. 

“Okay, so maybe we have a little bit of a rapport,” he finally allowed, Archer having had gone silent in Trip's hasty denial. “But I dunno what you want me to do about it.” 

“I want you to suggest to him that it's time for him to take a day off, is what I want you to do.” 

Trip snorted and pressed the button for the turbo-lift, gesturing for Archer to go through before him. “Like I could do that.” 

“In three days' time we're going to be at H60-317F and I want the both of you on the away team. It's Minshara-class and we think populated, but the Vulcans haven't been there so it's a crap-shot as to, well, whether or not someone actually gets shot.”

“Or otherwise maimed.” 

Archer nodded in concession to Trip's, admittedly more flippant than not, reply. 

“Do I have to take the day as well?” 

“If you're going to put it like that, then yes.” 

Trip, snorting indignantly, followed Archer doggedly out of the lift, pleading his case in terms of plasma casings and warp manifolds and other bits of equipment that didn't actually need to be taken care of for another couple of weeks or so. The captain, as his wont, blithely ignored all of Trip's more than reasonable suggestions for things he could do instead of taking a day—Trip would, more likely than not, just end up reading the newest engineering journals that he hadn't the time for since he went out into the black. 

“I'll make it an order.” 

They stopped at Archer's door to his quarters, Trip resigned to the tasks his friend had set up for him to accomplish before departing with the away team. He knew that Archer was unlikely to let either he or Reed accompany the team should they not take adequate recreational time in the seventy or so hours they had until they reached their newest destination. 

“You don't have to, Captain.” A pause then, as Trip stood there and actually considered what Archer said. “But I'll tell the lieutenant that you did, if it'll help my case.” 

“Feel free to, Commander.” 

He nodded—Trip saw a smile play on his friend's lips, and if anything it made his mood at the entire situation worsen—and as he assured Trip that Lieutenant Kelby would be able to take care of any problems that might crop up, Trip could almost see his chances of sneaking away to Engineering halfway through his off-duty shift wither up into a deadened husk in front of him. 

“Now go talk to Lieutenant Reed, he got off-shift an hour ago.” 

“Why and how do you know that?” 

Archer shot him a blank look that Trip now figured he _must_ have gotten from T'Pol—and so much for his 'I actually choose not to partake in Vulcan influence' shtick that, while Trip agreed with the sentiment, he knew Archer had a less staunch of an opinion about the entire matter than he had previously. 

“I'm the captain.” 

And Trip had to admit that that was a fair enough explanation.

* * *

“Come on.”

Trip sighed and opened the door. 

“You busy, Malcolm?” he asked of the recumbent armory officer, the data-pad next to him showing words too small for Trip to even attempt to get a read on. 

“Not at all, Commander.” Reed stood up, running a hand through his still damp hair before tucking his hands behind his back, and Trip actually felt a little guilty at having had interrupted whatever down-time Reed seemed to let himself have. “How can I help you?” 

“The captain wants you to take a day off before we get to the planet.

“And we're off-duty, so it's Trip.” 

“Of course.” Reed nodded, most likely to himself rather than to what Trip had said, before his eyes slid away from Trip who—apparently could not act like a normal human being when around someone he was on uneven ground with and wasn't able to just kill them with kindness—was smiling awkwardly as the silence between them started to become stagnant. After a few more seconds Reed nodded again and looked up. 

“Tomorrow won't be any good—we've been working on fixing whatever it is that got mucked up yesterday and I'm running a full diagnostic. Probably won't get results in 'til 1130. 

“The day after I should be fine enough though, and if I'm on the away team I can just pop in on shift early and do prep before the briefing.” 

Trip, who had been waiting for Reed to start vehemently arguing against the very notion of taking the off-hours, felt a little thrown at getting such an easy agreement to Archer's demand. If he were honest with himself he actually felt a little cheated at not getting the chance to wheedle Reed into taking a day off—it felt a little like an incomplete job, and Trip had always hated those. 

“That's when I'm taking mine off too,” he decided suddenly, “we'll have lunch. Maybe watch a movie.” 

“Haven't you been complaining at not having enough time to read your newest 'Engineering Monthly' or whatever it's called?” 

“Yeah, but...” Trip trailed off with a shrug, not quite knowing how to admit to Reed that space was lonely and that he wasn't as much of an uptight asshole as Trip had initially thought. “Don't want to spend all day reading, you know?” 

“Quite.” 

It wasn't clear whether or not Reed actually did understand what Trip was talking about, or if it was easier for the lieutenant to summarily agree with his commander so as to get him out of his quarters faster, but whatever the reason Reed agreed with Trip, it felt good enough for him. 

“Okay, then. Good.”

Reed nodded and Trip figured the other man was done with the conversation, but as he turned to leave Reed's fairly sparse quarters, he was stopped by a: 'Trip, are you quite sure you're alright?'

Half facing away, Trip had the pleasant experience of deciding whether or not to turn and face Reed, or to answer him with a flippant remark behind his back as he left. After a moment of quibbling, he finally decided to go with a little of column 'a' and a little of column 'b-eing on the edge of exploratory sciences and new frontiers is actually a whole lot different than expected.' 

“Weird week,” he replied, turning to face Reed fully at hearing him snort in agreement. 

“Don't I know it.” 

Trip grinned a little—if anyone understood the sort of existential crisis Trip had been unwillingly thrust in, it would be Reed, to whom the exact same thing had happened—and shrugged a shoulder in what he hoped to be a nonchalant motion; Reed raised an eyebrow in response, so Trip figured his nonchalance was not as apparent as he had hoped it to be. 

“If you need anything, then—since we're friends and all...” Reed gave a shrug to finish off his statement and Trip attempted not to notice the similarity between Reed's prevarication and his own. 

“Yeah,” Trip replied, patting Reed's shoulder with friendly force, “you too, Malcolm.” 

With a jaunty two-fingered salute, Trip left Reed back to whatever the tactical officer had been doing before, and made his way to his own quarters with a little bit of a pip in his step—it had been a discomfiting week, for sure, and Trip was actually glad it would end on something as low-key as lunch and a movie with a friend, a full day's worth of work away or no.

* * *

“Commander Tucker?” 

Trip turned from where he had been re-aligning the plasma manifolds to where Reed was standing at a perfectly-executed parade rest behind him. 

“How can I help you, lieutenant?” 

“Did you get the memo I sent you earlier today?” 

The clamour of his little Engineering bees soothed the sudden silence that overtook Trip as he cast his gaze towards where his data-pad had been sitting at his station, unattended to since he had gone on shift. Reed's eyes, Trip was sure, followed to where his own were pinned at.

“Well, Malcolm, that'd be a 'no'.” 

Another pause. 

“I suppose it's my own fault then—for not just comm.-ing you, I mean.”

Before Trip could reply, Reed continued with an efficiency that made Trip believe he had probably been expecting something like this to come from the engineer. 

“I need about fourteen percent more energy yield for some tests I'm running with the armory mainframe—the diagnostic turned up normal, so it has to be something in the hardware.

“Regardless, I was wondering when would be a good time for you, or if it actually matters with what you're working on today.” 

Trip looked around Engineering, trying to remember what projects he had sent his people to work on—the only person whose work Trip could imagine being interrupted by whatever Reed had planned would be Ensign Manabe, and the ensign was likely to have already finished working on the parts that would take a significant amount of power. Without being able to be completely sure, however, Trip bit the bullet and glanced over at the data-pad to make sure that he hadn't forgotten something terribly important. Reed, vaguely amused by his half-smile and not doing anything particularly important by his languid looking around Engineering, waited patiently for Trip to get his shit together as opposed to poking fun at him like he could have easily done. 

“You're good to go whenever—just comm. down here when you do so none of my people think the worst.” 

Reed huffed out a laugh, nodding his assent with an easy motion that Trip felt incongruous to what he had seen of the armory officer in their previous encounters. Maybe their brush with death really did peel back the frustratingly obstinate demeanor of Trip's fellow departmental head. 

“Will do, Commander.” 

Expecting Reed to take his leave, Trip decided that checking his messages would be a good use of his time—he honestly was not in the mood for another surprise interruption, was more than a little baffled that Reed's interruption hadn't pushed him into sniping territory like Trip had presumed any sort of substantial interaction would put him at—and found himself startled when Reed decided to speak once more. 

“Are we still on for tomorrow, then?” 

Trip looked up from the data-pad, blinking at Reed who, to Trip's bemusement, seemed to redden at his own blunt inquiry, a dim dismay overtaking his face as Trip struggled with his own smile at the lieutenant's consternation. 

“You bet your ass we are, Malcolm, and I have a great twentieth-century science fiction movie that I'm sure you'll love.” 

“Oh, that's just lovely, Trip, thank you for taking my personal preferences into account for my own day off.” 

“There's explosions.” 

“As long as they're not terribly loud.” 

“'As long as they're not terribly'—are you joking?” 

Reed grinned. 

“I'll see you tomorrow, Commander. Have an enjoyable rest of shift.” 

Trip grunted in reply, his eyes narrowed and following Reed's steady form as he walked out of Engineering. Tomorrow, Trip ventured, would be an interesting foray into a further understanding of the erstwhile inscrutably stolid officer, and would maybe even help the disquiet Trip felt that had taken him until after their stint in the shuttlepod to realize he had been feeling that unease since Enterprise had left spacedock.

* * *

The rest of Trip's shift was not, unfortunately, enjoyable in any sort of capacity. In fact, if Trip had not already been seeing the merits of a day off, the utter disaster that made up his usual hours plus four of overtime in cleanup would have put him firmly into Archer's way of thinking. 

It was with a sigh of relief, then, that Trip fell into his bed, the heavy 'thump' of his body flopping down stifling the groan as his head hit the pillow. 

“Computer,” he began, “set alarm for...” Trailing off, he grinned as he realized that an alarm was unnecessary. “Computer, belay that.” 

The computer beeped its response and Trip closed his eyes, not bothering to strip down from the casual clothing he had put on after showering off the grease that had managed to cover half of Engineering's alpha shift before a crewman managed to put a seal on the spurting leak. He let out a heavy breath, debating whether or not to deal with his paperwork right now or if he wanted to keep it until after getting back from the planet; what he should do, and what Trip was actually going to end up doing if he didn't open his eyes and sit up _right now_ were vastly disparate, and as he managed to get most of his blanket up from underneath him it became obvious which was more likely to happen. 

As soon as it seemed likely he was going to fall asleep, however, his luck decided to turn on him and there came a chime at his door. Refusing to do anything, hoping that whoever was calling him up would go away once it seemed that the chief engineer was either not in or indisposed, Trip kept his eyes closed while pulling the blanket over his face. 

The door chimed again. 

“Commander Tucker, the ships sensors indicate that you are currently in your quarters and have been so for the last hour; your light is still on so it is unlikely that you are resting.” A pause. “I would prefer not to have to chime your door again if you are available.” 

Trip shot up in bed in an instant, a distracted 'shit!' coming out, unbidden as he in a terrible rush remembered why he was supposed to do his paperwork before falling asleep. 

“Yeah, T'Pol, come on in,” he replied, knowing that her Vulcan-senses most likely picked up on his expletive but also knowing it wouldn't be the only thing she would be annoyed about by the conversation's end. 

“Hey, sorry about that—that mess in Engineering today really did a number on me and my department.” 

“Yes, Commander, that is exactly what the incident report I expected from you would have been about. Since I have not received it, the captain informed me to come here and 'remind' you.” 

Trip grunted. T'Pol's nostrils flared in what Trip assumed to be her version of an exasperated sigh. 

“Captain Archer presumed that you would not have your report ready and has indicated for me to tell you that an extension will be given. Also, an incident report has been filed by Lieutenant Kelby.” 

“Okay.” He paused. “You could've told me that over the comm..” 

“The captain has—” T'Pol pursed her lips and looked Trip up and down; Trip resisted the urge to cover himself up with the blanket he had left on his bed. “It is my belief that the captain wanted to 'check up' on you without it being quite so obvious.”

“What do you mean?” 

“You have spent 3.6 hours daily, on average, in overtime work.” 

“Yeah, so?” 

“Between the two of you, you and Lieutenant Reed have accrued half of the overtime hours for the senior staff in the past month.” 

“Really?” 

“Yes, Commander.” 

For a moment there was silence, Trip thinking back to the last month and what he had been working on to rack up that significant proportion of staff hours. There was nothing terribly out of the ordinary that came to mind, and Trip had the horrible suspicion that T'Pol, the Vulcan—out of _everyone_ currently serving on Enterprise—had a better work to recreation ratio than he did. 

“Huh,” he finally responded with, T'Pol's 'indeed' hardly noticed as Trip stifled a yawn into his inner elbow, the adrenaline from the unexpected visit finally wearing off. 

“I will let you rest, Commander.” A pause. “I will also let the captain know that you are making full use of your given recreation time.” 

Trip nodded, an easy 'good night, Sub-commander' following T'Pol as she strode out of his quarters. 

As soon as the doors closed behind her, Trip flopped once more onto the bed and turned down the lights. This time, it took no longer than a couple of minutes for him to fall asleep.

* * *

The chime to his door woke Trip up. 

“What?” he asked, voice gruff as he tried to clear out the cobwebs in his mind. 

“Trip?” 

“Malcolm?” He sat up, rubbing his hand through his hair tiredly, a little worried by Reed's sudden presence. “Come on in.

“What time is it?” 

“You don't know?” 

Reed's clipped British accent took on a rounded edge in the dim light of Trip's quarters—something about the question made Trip swallow, heavy, viscous, and a little ragged. Trip shrugged but didn't bother to look at the chronometer by the side of his bed. 

“What's wrong?” 

“I think you know quite well what's wrong, Trip.” 

Trip, about to answer that he didn't know what the hell the tactical officer was talking about, found himself instead looking to where Reed was silhouetted, eyes preternaturally bright as he walked the two steps forward in order to bring himself to the side of Trip's bed. It was all at once then—something about the motion, about Reed's movements and the conviction in the other man's tone that Trip must know what the matter was—that Trip understood. 

“Okay,” he said, nodding as Reed sat down on the edge of his bed, his hand coming to rest on Trip's jawline, feather-light and sparking against his skin. “Okay.” 

Eyes still bright, Reed smiled. It was during the kiss that Reed's voice came to Trip's, unusually quiet, mind: 

_k'lath'gh_

* * *

The chronometer told Trip it was 0412. 

“Okay,” he told the empty air, shivering at the unintentional recitation of the last thing he had said in his sleep. 

“That was a weird dream.” 

And Trip? Was not talking about the kissing part.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trip and Reed's day off (part one).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, and I hope you continue to enjoy!

“—entire system went down, I mean just completely off-line and the lieutenant was understandably furious.” 

Trip, who had holed himself away into what could be classified as a corner of the mess, listened to the two gossiping crewmen with half an ear, most of his focus still on the engineering journal and the food he had in front of him. 

“Apparently he dismissed Ensign Brooks and a third of the gamma crew halfway through their shift and then spent the next six hours in the armory—Karina was assisting him and she told me that he was just cussing the entire time.” 

“Did she learn anything new from listening in?”

He was interrupted from hearing anything else as a group of twittering ensigns made their way into the room. Figuring that he would get a clearer, and more accurate, picture if he waited until his lunch with Reed, Trip restrained himself from trying to get the story out of one of his engineers—gossip aboard the Enterprise was swift and mercurial, but never entirely veridical. 

Trip tapped his fingers idly against the edge of the data-pad and penned an annotation against one of the newer, hypothetical, warp equations currently in peer review. It was strange, not being able to spearhead Starfleet's engineering advances back in San Francisco, but Trip also knew that it would be even stranger if he were still back on Earth, knowing that the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on the teetering edge of humanity and Trip's own beloved warp engines were traversing through the galaxy without him. It was, he supposed, six of one and a full dozen of the other—the sheer abnormality and enormity of what they were doing on Enterprise was dazzling, too bright at moments, and altogether too consuming for him to truly think of doing anything else. 

A beep on his data-pad signaling its low power brought him out of his reverie, and Trip saved his annotations before the pad could shut itself off—scooping up his half picked-over breakfast tray, he placed it on the metal tray-tower along with the detritus of other crew members' meals. 

As he walked out of the mess, Trip experienced a panicked moment of not knowing what he was planning on doing or where he was panning on going—with Engineering out of the question and a heavy aversion to going back into his quarters, only data-pads for company until lunch, there wasn't anywhere he particularly wanted to be. Scrabbling for purchase against his own loss of equanimity and clearing his throat hastily, Trip brushed his coverall off for non-existent lint as he dithered in the corridor, mind going as fast as what he supposed a warp seven engine would. 

Someone bumping into Trip's shoulder, their head down and engrossed in whatever their data-pad had on it, was the only reason he got to moving—aimless though it was. Maybe he would go to the gym, get a workout in or something. But then—a whisper of a dream, of a freshly-shaved cheek and a workout of an entirely different kind, ran like a soft breeze through Trip's mind. Maybe he should go and see what Reed was up to. 

Without fully-conscious thought, Trip started his way towards Reed's quarters, entirely too early in their plans for his company to be passed off for anything other than what it was—a need for companionship that, after their fraught relationship had been brought to a head in a freezing shuttlepod, could only be settled by the inscrutable armory officer. 

Before Trip could talk himself out of the motion, he hit the chime on Reed's door. When there was no answer he hit it again. 

“What?”

The voice was creaky—the harmonium found at age eight in his grandmother's attic made a similar sound when he had first pressed a hand to the dusty keys that Trip couldn't help both his double-take and the moment it took him to answer Reed's question. 

“Malcolm?” he finally had the wherewithal to ask, only realizing how inane his question was after it had already come out of his mouth. 

“Trip?” A pause. “Come on, then.” 

The green light clicked over the door, and Trip opened it, only noticing that Reed's room was dark when he had closed it behind him. 

“What time is it?” Reed asked, and it was with a shivering bout of déjà vu that Trip realized this was the inverse of his dream—the conversation, the motions, reversed. He wondered if what had sparked between them the moment the two had touched would stay the same. 

“1005,” Trip answered, and the disquiet was broken, the mirror cracked by the unexpected. 

“Why are you here?” Reed cleared his throat, and palmed the light switch on, the now brighter room making him squint—Trip watched as Reed scrubbed a hand against his hair, before swinging his legs over the bed's side and standing up. “And I mean that in the best of manner possible, I assure you.”

He yawned. “But honestly, why're you here? It's nowhere close to lunch and I only got to sleep two bloody hours ago.” 

“So there was a power issue?” 

“The phase cannons.” Reed paused in a yawn and it was only as he stretched that Trip noticed the lieutenant's state of dress, or undress as it were—Trip was about to comment on Reed's lack of care to his state of decorum, but realized it would be ineffective as a taunt. Propriety was usually the first thing to go when you shared a decontamination chamber with a multitude of others on the regular and it wasn't quite the time to draw attention to Trip's own notice of Reed's boxer-ed and sleepy state. “The phase cannons, those two-bit fuckers, decided to overload the main armory systems.”

“How?” Trip asked, watching as Reed sat back down on his bed, himself a looming presence in the doorway. 

“Is this for a report? I told Kelby there should be no problem with Engineering—I managed to keep it to the one power drain.”

“Nah,” Trip denied, slouching against the wall to try and not loom quite so much as he always felt as though he did, “I just heard a couple of crewmen talking about it.” 

He paused for a moment. “I'm sorry, I should go, I woke you up.” 

“No,” Reed answered, shaking his head and waving Trip closer. After a moment, he stood once more and pulled on a pair of sweats, pointing Trip to the bed as he went to his closet to pull on a t-shirt. “I shouldn't sleep anymore, regardless. Ruin my schedule.” 

Reed's accent, still thick as he woke himself up after an insufficient amount of rest, made the word sound more like 'shed-ule' and Trip couldn't help his smile at Reed's pronunciation; he sat on the edge of Reed's bed after a moment of hesitation, dreams that didn't happen still front and center in his mind as he made himself as comfortable as he conceivably could under the circumstances. 

“So, what'd you want me for this early, then?” 

Trip, about to answer with an irreverent, 'a lot of things, Malcolm,' decided he would probably be better off in keeping his mouth shut on that particular line—at least until he better understood Reed's intentions to his own person, and Trip's own still fluctuating emotional attraction—and tried to formulate an answer that wouldn't sound as though Trip didn't know what to do with himself when not on duty. 

Unable to think of one, however, Trip decided that the truth, while pathetic, was better than fumbling for something that would both sound idiotic and a total lie as soon as the words came out. 

“I didn't really want to do anything other than hang out with you.”

Reed blinked. His brows raised before he blinked again. Trip, to his own credit, only fidgeted a little bit as Reed, silent, looked him up and down from where he was now at the other end of the bed, legs pulled up to sit criss-cross applesauce—Trip was absolutely certain there was another, less childish and more accurate, word for what the man was doing, but all he could think of was pre-school and that damn song his teachers had them sing about sitting down and paying attention. 

“I mean, I know I'm good company,” Reed's voice was wry as he continued to speak, obviously understanding most of the crew's perception of him, “but I didn't know I was 'come uninvited' good.

Silence. 

“Not that what I'm saying is—I mean, I wasn't attempting to imply anything when—” He cut himself off, bluster not even bothering to trail itself in the words' wake. 

“Hey—Malcolm.” 

A sigh. “What?” 

“I could come uninvited, if you know what I—” 

“Shut up, Trip.” 

Their gazes caught for a moment, and it was the look in Reed's eye that prompted Trip into action. Reed followed suit quickly, and soon they were giggling worse than a gaggle of pre-teens meeting their favorite movie star.

“So, ehm, what'd you want to do, then?” Reed finally managed to get out—it was close to three minutes later as whenever one of their giggles dissolved, something about the other would set them off once more, until they were finally forced to look away from each other and into some middle distance to get themselves under a semblance of control. 

“I have absolutely no clue,” Trip admitted, letting his head lean back against the cubby next to Reed's bed as he caught his breath.

After a moment of thoughtful silence, they started speaking over one another until Trip realized what was happening and stopped mid word. Reed, however, seemed to notice at the same time, and had stopped speaking as well. 

“Go ahead,” Trip said, waving to Reed to finish. 

“Oh, well I was just going to say that if you don't terribly mind, you could take a look at those phase pistol schematics I'm working on—I need to shower, but you can tell me if you agree with the equations and their interpretation for desired output, afterward.”

Trip understood that Reed didn't actually _need_ his opinion on the output for his new schematics, but he also understood that Reed was giving him an easy reason for being able to stay. He looked over at the tactical officer who was hunched forward, chin resting on his elbows as he blinked, still a little bleary, at Trip. 

“You should have it cold—shock you awake.” 

Reed scoffed, but his shrug after was in mute agreement to Trip's suggestion; he hadn't realized how easy it was, in knowing what to look for, to get a good read on Reed—pun unintended. Before Trip could share his truly brilliant observation, however, Reed started to rummage in his blankets and Trip was bemused into silence. With a soft, 'there you are, you little boiler-licker,' Reed produced a data-pad from somewhere in the depths of whatever pocket universe obviously existed in his bed, and handed it over to Trip. Trip, not knowing what else to do, took it with a delayed 'thanks.' 

“Here. I'll be quick about showering though, I know both how fast you read and how fast you get impatient.” 

“What's a 'boiler-licker'?” Trip asked, stuck on that odd bit of phrasing more than anything else Reed had said. 

Reed shrugged. “It's something my father and his mates would say when I was too young to hear them swear. Never quite got out of the habit, I suppose.” 

“It's cute.” 

A clicking of Reed's tongue was the only answer Trip got, and he grinned in triumph at his back despite knowing Reed couldn't possibly see the motion. He watched as Reed gathered up a small pile of clothing, only turning away from him when he turned—Trip turned the data-pad on, placing his own, now out of battery, data-pad beside him. 

“If you have any notes...” Reed trailed off, and Trip snorted before tapping at the schematics now in front of him.

“You know very well that I ain't going to find anything, Malcolm.” 

Silence for a moment. 

“Well read it anyway, and I'll be back soon enough, yeah? Who knows, you might find something I completely missed.” A pause. “There is, after all, a first time for everything.” 

“Get out of here,” Trip replied, throwing one of Reed's discarded shirts at the man, who dodged the projectile with ease. 

“Throwing things at me in my own quarters, Trip, you're an absolute disaster.” 

Trip rolled his eyes, resolutely determined to go over Reed's newest notes and ignore how easily—how quickly—they had slipped into the sort of friendship Trip had dismissed as ever being possible between the two of them. While there was some part of him that felt it sudden, most of him felt it almost necessary, if not just simply meant to happen in some form or another. No matter the reason, Trip believed, he still felt the better off for the new friendship—how long the both of them would be able to maintain the friendship, though, was an entirely different story. There was no doubt in his mind as to his attraction, and a continually lessening doubt as to Reed's, and Trip usually didn't believe in karmic timing, but he would also be hard-pressed to believe it anything less.

* * *

He and Reed had decided to take a later lunch than most of alpha shift usually partook in, arguing over academic papers and improvements to hull plating with an easy banter as they walked into the sparsely populated mess. Trip watched as Reed, without missing a step or a word in their conversation, scanned the room in what he could only assume to be an ocular pat down of whatever inherently suspicious things Starfleet personnel would obviously have on their persons during rec hours. Or, Trip amended, he was finding a circuitous route to keep the two of them away from where Sato, Mayweather, and Tanner were chatting up a storm. 

Surprised and more than a little flattered that Reed didn't drop the two of them at the table in order to foist the buck of their conversation over to the ensigns, he gamely followed Reed to the same table he had sat at during breakfast. 

“It's as close to a corner as the mess has,” Reed explained as Trip made a noise in the back of his throat. “No one will bother us. 

“Of course,” he continued, sitting down and pushing Trip's chair out with a quick motion of his foot from under the table, “it always seems to be occupied whenever the day's been a headwreck, so it doesn't usually do me much good.” 

Trip sat on the proffered chair, his gaze a little narrowed as Reed started to politely pick at his food. He had the strange feeling Reed was up to something, but he couldn't quite place his finger on it. 

“Malcolm?” he asked, the name drawn out more than usual; Reed, who had taken an economical bite of his lunch, placed the fork on the edge of his plate and swallowed his food, only then looking up at Trip with a polite expression—Trip could see the caginess and tried desperately not to smile.

“Hmn?” Reed replied, left hand wringing at the back of his neck in a nervous motion that Trip had never seen from him before. 

“Is this like...” he trailed off, not wanting to be wrong. “Okay, is this like some sort of proto-date or something?” 

“Are you asking me if I've taken you on a trial date?” 

“Yes,” Trip said, nodding in time with his affirmation, eyes straight on Reed even as Reed flickered his away every few seconds. 

The longer it took for Reed to answer Trip's inquiry however, the more Trip started to believe that he had, somehow, misinterpreted his friend's, well _friendliness_ , for something decidedly less platonic. Unable to now maintain eye contact, hotly embarrassed and fighting down more emotion than expected, his eyes planted themselves to the safe space in the middle of the table between their trays. About to try and backtrack however he could—Trip had honestly not believed himself to be wrong about Reed's interest, and he hadn't thought of what would happen if the armory officer didn't affirm Trip's presumption—he was saved from whatever stammered reply he could have made by Reed clearing his throat. 

“I suppose I have, yeah.” 

Trip's neck snapped up. Reed, to his own credit, had his own eyes focused on the spot behind Trip's right shoulder. 

“And?” The question came out before better, more meaningful statements could form in his mind. 

“And what?”

“Is it worth it?” 

Reed—and there must have been something in Trip's tone to denote his anxiety at the situation, at what he was hoping the answer would be—looked puzzled at what should have been a non-sequitur, before he saw Trip's face and his own smoothed out. 

“Yes, I think so. May have a go at the rest of the day to make sure, but...” He shrugged and, after bestowing Trip was a smile, picked up his fork again to take another bite of his food. “It depends on if you find it worth it as well.” 

“'May have a go at the rest of the day, but...'” Trip echoed, before grinning. “Yeah, I think it'll be.” 

“Good.” Reed nodded, resolute. “Now—can we finish eating? You've been haranguing me about this bloody film all morning and at this point if I don't see it, I'll even find myself disappointed.” 

“Your wish, Malcolm,” Trip replied, before amending it to a 'Mal?' and then switching back to 'Malcolm' at Reed's non-committal hum—Trip felt it judging, but in that surreptitious, appeasing sort of way—and Trip's own discomfiture at the diminutive. 

And, in an odd ease that came out from having their nascent feelings out in the open, they ate lunch, chit-chatting along like nothing had changed between the two of them. Nothing, Trip thought, really had changed, in the thick and thin of the matter—it was the next step in what was bound to happen at some point in their future relationship. 

There were just some things that you couldn't go through with someone you were irrevocably attracted to, without forging a deep bond—and almost dying in a shuttlepod? was most definitely one of those things.

* * *

Somewhere in the last twenty minutes of the movie, Reed had fallen asleep. It wasn't until Trip, complaining over the credits about the ending being more sequel fodder than actual resolution—a fact which he had remembered only as he saw it playing out on the screen—had turned to him in searching for an agreement to his whining, that he saw Reed's slumped form for what it was. 

Vacillating between a quiet amusement to let Reed rest for awhile longer yet and an overwhelming urge to wake him by a series of increasingly absurd means, Trip let himself instead take a hard look at Reed. With lines smoothed out, jaw loosened, hair disheveled and no uniform, Reed was a striking man and Trip felt a little thrill at being one of the few people whose presence made Reed comfortable enough to fall asleep in. After a moment though, when it became obvious to Trip that he was going to do nothing more than stare at the lieutenant until Reed woke up—and wouldn't that be just perfect for the armory officer to wake up to? Trip Tucker, his friend/maybe something more, staring at him, doleful and pathetic—he made move to do something for it. 

There must have been some sort of atmospheric shift as Trip moved, because as soon as his hand hovered, hesitant, over Reed's upper arm, Reed spoke. 

“gth'k'li.” 

“What?”

“gth'k'li, fa dith-jsk—thg jth-kari, k'lith'gh.”

Trip, who had heard the words for what they weren't—a language he actually understood—found himself more focused on the fact that Reed's lips weren't moving when he said them. 

“What?” he ended up asking again, bewilderment only intensifying as he looked up to see Reed's eyes, concerned and half-asleep, on him. 

“You should've woken me, then.” 

“Is that what you said before?” 

“No, I didn't say anything, Trip—you just woke me.” 

As though to exemplify his words, Reed shook his arm a little; Trip's hand was against Reed's upper arm, as though he had just completed a motion he didn't remember even beginning. 

“I know I shouldn't be the one to talk, considering I'm the one that just fell asleep, but did you sleep well last night, Trip?” 

“Okay enough,” Trip replied unthinkingly, starting to tap his fingers against Reed's arm in what couldn't be construed as anything other than a nervous tic. Reed, and thank God for the man's stolid disposition, didn't make to move away. 

“Okay,” Reed agreed easily. 

“I mean, I slept fine, I guess.” 

“Mmnh.” 

“Well, I had a weird dream but who doesn't every not and then, am I right?” 

“I know that I've had strange dreams,” Reed replied. “Last night included.” 

And though Trip understood that Reed's dream could only be coincidence, he still found himself asking what the dream was about. Trip was waved away, and it was only after Reed, flushing high on his cheeks and stammering out an 'it doesn't particularly matter, does it?' that he thought to be irrationally jealous of whatever dream being Reed had encountered. He was saved from the rush to his head at the very last moment, however, by Reed once more—with a pointed look, still flushed, Trip realized that he had most likely been dreaming about _him_. 

“What was strange about it?” Trip asked, a little insulted that it wasn't a sexy dream. 

“Well, the strangest thing was your horrendous attempt at Welsh. The rest...” He trailed off, before throwing Trip a look over his lashes. “Well the rest wasn't terrible at all.” 

“Welsh?” Trip asked, half of him immediately regretting not just asking about the 'not terrible' parts of the dream. 

“Mm-hmm,” Reed said, patting at where Trip's fingers were still drumming on his arm. His fingers stilled at the touch and, with a hesitant twist of his lips, Reed kept his and atop Trip's own. “All guttural stops and 'th's and comma-pauses and consonants where they have absolutely no place to be. I mean, none of it was correct, but...”

“Weird.” It was an inadequate reply, but it was all Trip had, considering it wasn't the answer to help him solve his own small, psychological mystery. 

Throwing away Reed's unspoken words as part of Trip's own subconscious mind—he must have been superimposing his dream onto his actions to awaken Reed—he instead decided to focus on the part of Reed's statement he should have done in the first place. 

“What was the 'not terrible' part of the dream?” 

Reed clicked his tongue and lounged out on the side of Trip's bed he was sitting on. Trip, trying not to stare in too obvious a manner, sprawled out next to him. 

“Oh, I'm sure you know.” 

And though Trip did not actually know, he was also quite content to imagine.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading - hope you enjoy this chapter!

“Do you want to watch another vid?” 

Reed, who had propped himself up on his elbows at the beginning of Trip's question, shook his head in reply and maneuvered himself back down into a reclined position against his bed. After a few moments Trip felt Reed's toes pocking into his thigh and he turned to look down at Reed who, with eyes closed as though innocent of his motions, was giving off a faint smug aura by his smile. Trip grabbed Reed's ankle, keeping it still as he picked up a data-pad from the shelf next to Reed's bed. 

“What'd you want to watch, though?” 

“I don't want to watch anything, Trip,” Reed replied, halfheartedly trying to free himself from Trip's hold; Trip was aware that, should Reed wish to, he could more than easily overpower him—Trip also tried to think about that in the _least_ sexual of terms, but that usually ended being a hard bet, with that particular pun wholeheartedly intended. 

“What do you want, then?” Trip asked. 

He was unable to help the flush that went down his neck as Reed opened his eyes and stretched out a little, languid as he locked his eyes with Trip's. 

“Well, if you ask it like that...” He trailed off and grinned as Trip's grip on his ankle tightened, reflexive and grounding. 

“Are you trying to seduce me, Lieutenant Reed?” 

“What's your opinion on the matter?” The question was mostly flippant—both Trip and Reed understood the burgeoning relationship between them—but there was a slight hesitation in the words that Trip couldn't help but take notice of. And though he shouldn't be, Trip found himself more at ease with the entire situation now that he knew Reed was probably just as full of nerves as he was. 

“Well, since this was a trial date, I figured I should seduce you first,” Trip said. 

“Oh, did you?” Reed asked, the bemused, pleased look in his eye as he freed his foot from Trip's grip belying the air of vague hauteur the tone of his question had taken on.

With a smooth motion, then, and completely contrary to where Trip had believed him to be going, Reed stood up from the bed and planted himself on the chair at his desk. Feeling oddly bereft at the loss of the warm body sharing a small space with his own, Trip couldn't help the frown that he pinned Reed with as soon as he made his way to the edge of the bed, cracking his knuckles absently as he tried to stave off any further nervous tics. For what it was worth, Reed met his stare with an easy grace, a ghost of a wry expression lingering as he decidedly stayed exactly where he had sat himself. 

“Malcolm?” 

“Okay, so I understand that we're flirting, joking around and whatnot about this being a date, but—” Reed broke himself off and looked away—Trip's pulse pounded in his ears; he was sure the expression had been wiped off of his face altogether. 

Trip honestly could not believe that this was happening to him. 

“I thought this was going well,” Trip said, a little too loud for the room, but only just loud enough for him to hear over his own blood. There was a flush creeping up his neck, mortification warring with confusion. 

Reed looked up, the motion sharpish at Trip's tone. A look of mirrored confusion and embarrassment colored Reed's face before he seemed to comprehend what he had said and what Trip had responded with. 

“Yes, I didn't mean what I said—I mean, what it sounded like.” He took a pause for breath and grunted, running a hand through his hair—Trip watched him stumble with grim amusement.

“I don't want to do this if it's going to be a lark. I mean, this is going against my personal propriety regardless, but I only want to do it if—”

“Me too.” 

Trip stood up from the bed. Reed, who seemed to only stand due to muscle memory, cleared his throat before nodding and taking one, two, three steps over to Trip. They were both grinning a little, and as soon as Reed got close enough to Trip, he placed a hand on his neck, the side of his thumb brushing along Trip's jawline in a slight motion—Trip swallowed, heavy, at the motion, and he saw Reed reply in much the same manner. 

“It was even before our almost dying, if you can believe that.” 

And Trip, despite the sincerity of the moment, couldn't help the 'which time?' that came out in reply to Reed's statement. 

A pause. Reed narrowed his eyes at Trip, who blinked at Reed with what he hoped came out to be more guileless than anything else—by the slight scoff, Trip didn't quite manage to succeed. 

“Touché.”

Grinning, Trip took a small step forward; he and Reed were toe to toe now, and the warmth of the hand against his skin made Trip a little more daring with Reed than he would have been otherwise. The speed at which Reed relented his position made Trip a little hot and bothered, especially considering he knew exactly how obstinate he could be in both professional and personal settings. 

“If it helps, even when you were bitching at me the first time we met, I thought that if you could take that torpedo out of your ass...” He trailed off, waggling his eyebrows, and Reed rolled his eyes. 

“Yes, well I think your big mouth needs something to shut it up on the regular, but here we are and you're still speaking,” Reed said, placing his free hand on Trip's hip to keep him close. 

“Admit you like it and I'll stop.” 

“Well, that would defeat the purpose entirely, wouldn't it?” Reed replied, rhetorical and probably a little breathier than Trip felt Reed would care to admit. 

In hoping to continue to hinder Reed's countenance, Trip snaked an arm around his waist, making sure to spread his hand as far along Reed's back as he could manage. 

“Of me talking?” 

“Of me finding the best way to shut you up.” 

Unable to reply, Trip could only concede to being felled entirely by the tactical officer—which, considering it was part of the man's literal job title, he couldn't find himself too annoyed by. 

“You're really not doing me well in trying to woo you, Malcolm.” 

“Oh, please,” Reed replied, snorting a little as he squeezed Trip's hip idly; Trip tried not to bite his lip at the pressure, but Reed must have sensed something slightly off about him—probably his breathing pattern or something equally as minuscule that only a paranoid armory officer like Reed would notice—because he got that smug little smirk on his face that got Trip simultaneously annoyed and aroused. “Tell me that the both of us weren't already enamored with one another, wooing beside the bloody point, and I'll give you someone in my department who isn't afraid that I'll snap one day and kill them all for not being able to kill me first.” 

“You would, though,” Trip countered lightly, his attempt to put some normalcy back into the conversation not actually doing him any amount of measurable good. 

“Well, yes, but that's not the point I'm attempting to make, and you very well know it.” 

Trip nodded. “Yeah, but I like hearing you talk too, that's for sure.” 

“Ha!” 

“It's true.” 

Reed snorted. “Flatterer.” 

A pause as Trip, in a fit of breathless fondness, brought his hand up to the back of Reed's neck to press their foreheads together. Reed sucked in a breath. 

“Trip?” 

“Yeah?”

“Did you just headbutt me?” The question was mild, and Reed sucking in his bottom lip—Trip was thankful that he had managed to dart his eyes down seconds before Reed made the motion—only served to highlight the humor laced through the question. 

“Yup.” 

The thread of their conversation had been thrown by the wayside, but Trip figured that if Reed had anything more he needed to talk about in the moment, his thorough demeanor would have taken care of before they allowed themselves to lose the metaphorical plot. As he did not, Trip figured that the easy flirtations—the teasing not actually so different from their previous dealings, but significantly altered nevertheless—were simply the natural conclusion to what could have been a fraught conversation about intent and propriety between the two. 

“Archer to Reed.” 

It took a few seconds, Trip and Reed still in the throes of whatever wave they were currently riding on, but then Reed grimaced and pulled himself away from their embrace. Trip, whose hand Reed had taken hold of as opposed to fully separating himself from him, was toted neatly along to the comm. on the wall—Trip found that he didn't much care about the blithe following, especially not when it gave him the view that it did. 

“Reed here, Captain.” 

His voice was steady, the perfect officer as he pulled Trip in close to him and brought his free hand up and around Trip's waist. Which was—if nothing else, inexplicably hot. In a more graceful move than his usual wont, Trip grazed a hand down Reed's spine, smirking as he felt Reed's shudder at the feather-light touch. 

“Sorry to interrupt you on your day off,” Archer continued, only going on after Reed's 'of course, Captain, it's quite alright.'

“Do you mind interrupting your recreational time for a quick debrief before our departure tomorrow?”

“Of course not, when would you like to do so?” 

Trip sneered a little, the expression dissipating quickly into a grin as Reed rolled his eyes and stuck out his tongue. 

“Dinner in the Captain's mess, 1845 hours.”

“Yes, sir,” Reed agreed easily, the shift from foot to foot the only indication that he was uncomfortable with the matter. Trip couldn't help the fission of discomfort he felt in response to the tactical officer's obvious breach of acceptable decorum in accepting a dinner with his captain that could only be ostensibly about an away-team debriefing—Trip knew that meetings with Archer over any meal turned more social than anything resembling professional, and it seemed as though only T'Pol were able to put a pin in what would usually otherwise be a friendly recounting of their days. 

Idly, he wondered if Reed's discomfort had less to do with the upcoming dinner with the captain and more to do with the realization that their relationship—however ill-defined it was at the current moment—was most likely against the staunch rules in which Reed seemed to thrive upon. 

“You were with Commander Tucker today, right?” 

Reed's 'yes, sir,' was a little hesitant this time, as though unknowing of where the line of questioning was going, and Trip—mostly to assuage his own personal worries, he could readily admit—edged his nose against the shell of Reed's ear, hoping to distract him enough to ignore his apprehension. 

“Do you happen to know where he is?” 

The question was undeniably frustrated, and Trip let himself wonder for a moment how many times Archer had comm.-ed him before saving his friend for last, in a desperate hope that Trip would appear in the interim. It was odd that Archer didn't simply ask T'Pol to use the ship's sensors in order to locate Trip, but he also had the niggling suspicion that the captain had a solid guess as to where Trip would be, if not in his own quarters. 

Not that Trip expected Reed to actually—

“He's here, Captain.” 

Trip's brain broke. Just a little bit, and just until Reed smirked up at him, but it still took a second or two after hearing Archer's, 'oh?' that he managed to reply to the unasked question. 

“Hey, Captain, what can I do for you?” 

“Same thing as the lieutenant, if you don't mind, Commander.” 

“Sure thing, Captain,” Trip said. 

“Good man—see you both at 1845 hours. 

“Archer out.” 

The comm. beeped to indicate Archer disengaging the channel and Trip couldn't help his reaction once the line went dead. Taking Reed's chin between two fingers, he watched, avid, as Reed licked his lips as Trip didn't do anything but keep a light hold on him. 

“Yes?” he finally asked, and Trip swayed as close into Reed's personal space as he could without it being obvious that they were sharing breaths more than taking their own. 

“So you're just going to out our relationship like that, eh, Malcolm?” Trip responded, unflinching in what he had just insinuated with his word usage.

“The captain can infer what he will from you being here, our relationship notwithstanding.” Reed paused. “It's not as though we were hiding the fact that we were spending the day together.” 

Trip flushed a little at Reed's tacit confirmation. “It's not like the rest of the crew knew we were doing it on a date.”

“It's not as though _you_ did,” Reed pointed out dryly. 

“I was distracted.” 

“By what?” 

“By you.” 

Reed scoffed a little but Trip felt his body mold itself closer to his own—his thoughts scattered immediately, hyper-focusing in fractals on infinitesimal feeling; Trip's pulse loud in his ears, Reed's breath puffing against his lips, they stood, both entwined and separate, hanging by a gossamer moment. 

And then a 'we haven't even kissed yet' warred with an 'I wonder what the captain's so excited about.' 

Trip and Reed looked at one another. 

“What the fuck?” 

“I am so sorry, Trip, ignore me—I completely misconstrued the—”

“Jeez-us, Malcolm.” Trip, a little incredulous, didn't quite know how to respond. 

“I cannot believe I just—”

This time, Reed cut himself off and shook his head in apparent dismay at the events that had occurred in the last minute. Despite himself, Trip felt a swell of begrudging amusement than any sort of actual exasperation—Reed really knew how to ruin a perfectly good moment, but there was something endearing in the fact that despite Reed's startling sensuality, he was still the perfect, dumb tactical officer Trip had both originally known him and grown to really like him as. 

“Trip?” 

He was pulled out of his reverie by Reed's question, one of his hands brushing itself up and down Trip's jawline in an almost hypnotic motion. 

“Yeah?” 

Instead of a voiced reply, Reed pulled him down by the collar. He hesitated only a moment, long enough for Trip to start to close the remaining distance between them himself, before Reed pressed his lips against Trip's. The kiss was a little bruising, a little toothy, and Trip moved his hands to the small of Reed's back, one of them creeping itself up to between his shoulders. Soon—too soon for Trip's personal liking but most likely the more appropriate of times for where they were at in their relationship—Reed pulled away, the tip of his tongue flicking out against Trip's lips as he licked his own, the two of them closer than he had likely thought. 

“Okay—check that off the list, then.” 

Reed grinned, and Trip barely had time to think how smug it looked before Trip pulled him up for another kiss.

* * *

Despite trying his hardest—lingering in the entryway of Reed's quarters for as long as the both of them could manage before he went back to his own quarters to freshen-up a bit before the scheduled dinner—Trip still managed to be the first person to enter the captain's mess. Archer turned from where he had been viewing the planet that Enterprise was now orbiting. 

“So,” Archer needled, the grin on his face broadening as he took in Trip's undoubtedly more relaxed demeanor, “day off did you well?” 

“Yeah, and I know I was bitchin' about that before, so...” Trip shrugged, but Archer took the statement as it had been intended. 

“How about Reed?” 

“What about him?” 

“You two spent most of the day together, right? Or is the scuttlebutt wrong on that one?” Archer paused. “The scuttlebutt isn't usually wrong, though.”

He left his statement open to any sort of interpretation that Trip cared to put onto it—their decade-long friendship might have shifted once Archer had been implemented as his superior officer, but the captain still knew Trip's type. Archer's wheedling tone, Trip understood, was meant to be jocular—he had no reason to believe that Trip actually felt anything towards Reed other than friendship and vague attraction—but his words also hit on a truth of the matter. 

“He's fine,” Trip finally replied, knowing that his answer probably took longer than his friend had expected, and most likely a little less amused as well. 

“Got him to relax before tomorrow?” 

Trip nodded, mute and a little flustered—Archer most likely had no intent on Trip and Reed to forge a relationship in the hours they had been ordered to take off—before trying to find even ground once more. 

“What's this dinner about anyways, Captain?” 

“T'Pol thinks we might have a first contact opportunity.” 

“Really?” Trip asked, taking a seat without being invited—Archer, if he even noticed the breach in protocol, didn't do anything more than join him at the table. 

“Yes—I'll let her explain, though.” 

The comm. sounded. 

“It's open,” Archer said. Both he and Trip turned to face the door as it opened, and the impassive faces of Reed and T'Pol greeted them. 

“Exactly on time.” The captain beckoned the two of them in, the 'Sub-commander, Lieutenant,' falling easily as he gestured for the, to sit down. 

“Captain.” While not with the same intonation, and not quite in harmonization, T'Pol and Reed's acknowledgment of Archer was, nonetheless, almost perfectly synchronized. Trip sucked in his lips in order to stifle the laugh that threatened to come out. 

“Commander Tucker,” T'Pol said. 

“Sub-commander.” 

He nodded at Reed, who rolled his eyes in return. 

“Malcolm.” His hello was grave, but the exaggerated wink was anything but. 

“Trip.” Just as facetiously grave, and Trip felt chuffed at the dry look Reed pinned him with after—score one for Trip, who managed to keep this dinner from starting out completely stilted. 

“Were you both not in Lieutenant Reed's quarters earlier?” 

T'Pol's question was mild, the reproach in their ironic interaction only noticeable by the slight twitch of her nose—in either incomprehension or reproof of their teasing. The question threw him for a small loop, with both it and the answer more than obvious enough for Trip not to fully freak out and believe she somehow knew something that he—and Reed, most likely—still wasn't quite sure of, himself. Agreeing to go to an away-team debriefing cum experimental, Archer-sanctioned socialization session was the worst command in recent history that Trip had been forced to endure. 

Reed, because apparently the military upbringing did something about talking over your own inner air-horn, being an absolute fucking marvel, tackled T'Pol's question with an ease that even Archer must have felt uncharacteristic for his usually reticent tactical officer—if his surprised blinking at Trip was any indication. Score one for Reed, who managed to not fuck their entire game up before it could even get started.

Trip's throat felt a little tight but he managed a small smile back at Archer. Because if Reed was fairly comfortable then of course, just by scientific principle, all of that frenetic energy had to go somewhere and, because Trip was the other half of this equation, it would undoubtedly go into him. Because _that_ made sense. 

After a thorough debriefing in human interaction, friendly overtures and less prosaic means of communique, both T'Pol and Archer had managed to grow tired of being inundated with superfluous information; by the twitch of Reed's lips, that might have been his intention, as they didn't bother to ask any further delving questions. 

“So, about this first-contact...” Trip let his words trail off, throwing a bemused glance Reed's way as T'Pol's head snapped towards the captain. 

“It wasn't exactly a secret,” Archer said, the words ineffectual at best by T'Pol's withering stare. 

“There is a twenty seven-point-two percent chance that planet H60-317F has sapient life in this moment in history. Within that percentage, there is a ninety eight-point-six percent chance that the civilizations we encounter are a pre-warp capable species. Furthermore, by our lack of sensory data, it is likely they are in an entirely pre-industrial age.” 

“So there's evidence of civilization? How so?” Reed asked, ignoring the steward that had come in to serve them food for what must have been his own mounting security concerns. “What sort?” 

T'Pol opened her mouth to answer, only to be thwarted by Archer—her saving grace, Trip thought, was the way she went for her water glass immediately, no hesitation, and brought it to her lips as though that were her goal the entire time.

“You're not getting a bigger security contingent for the away-mission, Lieutenant,” Archer chided mildly, and even without Trip and Reed's bond—as Archer himself had put it only the day previous—it was obvious that Reed was barely holding himself back from saying that Archer never let him have a larger contingent, no matter to his reasonable concern. 

“I wasn't going to ask for one, sir,” was what Reed actually said, knuckles white and voice tight. Trip, in a staggeringly potent burst of empathy, wondered what it would be like if the captain took his own engineering concerns with only the most begrudging of acceptance. It was a good thing that Reed was a notoriously paranoid bastard, then, or Trip might feel obligated to say something to Archer about listening to the various heads of departments on Enterprise. 

Archer nodded and T'Pol, sensing that she would not be interrupted this time, took another small sip of water before speaking.

* * *

The dinner, all in all, had gone well enough after they had all decided that the most interesting topic of conversation was what they would be facing on the planet the next day. Without any means of communication—and with sensor data that equated to signs of civilization that could just as well be ruin than thriving—it was decided that they would land a pod in a forested area equidistant from two settlements, and make their separate ways from there. What they planned on doing should the planet prove to be inhabited, Trip didn't know, but he presumed that something would most likely go wrong should it happen to be the case. 

He and Reed walked side-by-side, arms brushing in a manner that could easily be construed as an attempt to keep their conversation at a reasonable level for the corridors. Everyone who passed them was so involved in their own routine, that they most likely wouldn't have noticed should Trip have taken Reed's hand or hauled close by the waist. Because, however, he was a thirty-two year old man and not a simpering fifteen year old teenager, Trip did neither of those things and instead continued his more decorous of flirtations. 

“You want a nightcap?” he asked—in his peripheral, he saw Reed eye him for a moment—and nudged Reed's shoulder with his own when he readily agreed. 

“Since we've no formal briefing tomorrow, I suppose I can manage a late night.” 

“Well, I mean, I don't want to be an imposition, Malcolm.” 

“Oh, you always are, Trip—I've simply grown accustomed to it.” 

Only the passing of a crewman stymied Trip's response. 

They kept silent until the turbo lift came, and even Trip didn't say anything of note until it was on its way to deck six. 

“Earlier, when dinner started...” 

Reed hummed in acknowledgment. 

“How did you even get through that? I mean, Jesus, Malcolm, I've never felt that many nerves around the Captain and T'Pol since we about first started up the mission.”

Reed shrugged. “By repeating to myself that I am a goddamned professional.” At Trip's disbelieving look, he expounded. “I just said: 'Malcolm, shape up or ship out—don't want to be the scourge of my own bloody existence, now do I?' Seemed to work well enough until we could all get down to the brass tacks of being there in the first place.

"Regardless, I did what I felt necessary considering you were in no state to." 

“We should really talk about all of this, you know, in relation to everyone else, shouldn't we?” 

“That's what the nightcap's for, yeah?” 

And, unable to disagree with Reed's assessment, Trip simply nodded. After a silent moment, he reached out to take Reed's hand and laced their fingers together. 

Before continuing, Reed squeezed Trip's hand. “I think we're basically on the same page, however.” 

“Yeah, me too.” 

They grinned at one another until the turbo lift doors chimed and Reed disentangled their hands before it could open fully. Expressions placid, then, they made their way to Trip's room for a drink and a talk.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus, the plot takes off. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

“At least it's not completely desolate.” 

Trip turned from his survey of the softly undulating blue valley—the gently rolling hills only marginally dotted with the traces of habitation, the rest overgrown and wild—to shoot Reed an exasperated look; Reed flashed him a quick, taunting grin in reply. 

“Captain.” 

T'Pol's statement was as subdued as usual, but there was something in her tone that made Trip take his attention from his planned rejoinder to what Reed had said. 

“What do you have, Sub-commander?” Archer asked, briskly swatting away an insect that Trip knew Phlox would like to get his hands on for further study—the potential hazardous effects of the wildlife on human biology was, according to the doctor, 'extremely fascinating and quite unlike any natural defense system I've seen before, you should look at the immunology on the plant life alone.' 

“Traces of chemicals in the soil—by every indication there has been, in the last five hundred years, genetically modified organic material planted in this valley. This is, of course, a suitable location for agriculture—naturally protected on two sides by mountainous terrain, with both accessible water flow and enough wind current to keep a healthy cross-pollination.” She paused. “I am not, however, an expert in agriculture, so it remains hypothesis unless and until Ensign Lakhanpal arrives on-planet and can assess the situation for himself.” 

“That would indicate a more advanced civilization, would it not?” Reed asked, and Trip watched in his peripheral as he un-holstered his phase pistol and surveyed their surroundings with a furthered wary eye. 

“I am not an expert,” T'Pol reiterated. 

“I'll take my chances,” Reed said after a moment of trying to track anything against the glare of the sun that had, inconveniently, come out through behind the clouds—without the direct rays, the first rotational morning was nice, but without anything to deflect the heat, Trip suddenly understood how it could get to be a dry, over 110 in the summer months. 

Archer's lips pursed and as he tried to lob Trip a commiserating look. Trip, however, had been experiencing a tremulous disquiet since Archer had landed the shuttlepod and opened the hatch to the atmosphere of H60-317F, and so couldn't find it within himself to do anything more than give the captain a weak shrug. 

“Keep it on stun, Lieutenant Reed,” Archer ordered. “There's nothing to say that this culture is still around, if it existed at all.” 

He grinned. “After all, the Sub-commander _did_ admit that she wasn't an expert in agriculture, so for all we know this can be a completely natural presence in this planet's dirt.” 

Reed's 'yes, Sir,' was decidedly measured, and even placed against T'Pol's narrowed stare at the Captain it still packed a considerable punch against what the armory officer most likely deemed insufficient security protocol. For the first time in a long while, Trip couldn't help but agree with this particular iteration of Reed's notoriously prolific paranoia, and he found himself edging closer to the only person who seemed to make any sense in this away team. T'Pol, who had started scanning what could have been a pile of rubble if one squinted and tilted their head, let out a 'hm' once every ten seconds or so, before leaning down with a small trowel to put some of the detritus into a sample container for further study. 

“We should split up.” 

“Captain?” The three of them asked the question at basically the same time: Reed, alarmed; T'Pol, reproving; Trip, already resigned to the inevitable. 

Archer grinned again. 

“T'Pol, with me—we'll head to the northern settlement. Trip? You and Malcolm take the southern settlement. We'll rendezvous back here at 16:30 tomorrow, ship-time.” 

“Captain?” 

“Yes, Mister Reed?” 

“I'd like to note that this is against every security protocol concerning away teams that I have made great attempt to implement in the past months.” 

“I am aware, Lieutenant.” 

Reed's nod was perfunctory, strained, and Trip could feel his own neck muscles cramping in sympathy—his shoulders almost up to his ears, Reed had never looked more formal, more quintessentially British-official than he did at the willful disregard of his preventative measures for keeping Starfleet personnel alive and marginally uninjured. “Then we shall rendezvous tomorrow. 

“Sub-commander T'Pol?”

She turned from where she had been pointedly ignoring the power-play between an obstinate head-of-department and an intransigent captain—the winner was usually clear by the end of their missions, but only after nothing could be done about the near-death experiences and when Reed's advice was nothing more than hindsight. “Yes, Lieutenant Reed?” 

“You have the phase pistol I gave you?” 

“Indeed, Lieutenant.” 

“Good woman.” 

T'Pol raised a brow at the expression but then, obviously taking the entire thing as just another human idiosyncrasy, decided that no comment was the best comment. 

And then, after picking up his rucksack and hurrying another nod towards Archer, Reed started heading toward the settlement that he and Trip had been commanded to go and investigate. With no intention of either being left behind or having to sweat in order to catch up to Reed, Trip popped off a jaunty salute to Archer and T'Pol, before picking up his own backpack and starting to jog his way towards their aggravated tactical officer—their newfound relationship notwithstanding, Trip felt that being away from Reed in a survival situation would only hinder his progress in any particular away-mission. 

“You just really left them like that, huh?” 

“I don't believe it was _terribly_ unprofessional,” Reed answered, the twist in his expression the only thing betraying the fact that he was still undecided on that point, himself. “With the walk to and back, let alone attempting to gain some semblance of what the settlement consists of, I took the liberty of us dispensing of unnecessary safety and survival protocol—Captain Archer seems to know it well bloody enough, after all.” 

For a few moments Trip let silence reign between the two of them; in vain attempt to assuage both Reed and his own concerns, his 'bad feeling about the planet?' came out considerably more snide than intended—his own, 'Jesus, sorry, Malcolm,' however, came out a lot more fraught than Reed's full-bodied slump. 

“I really have, though,” he admitted easily. Trip stepped beside Reed after he stopped mid-stride and turned to face him. “I'm not paranoid—there's something about or on this planet that's really grinding my gears.” A pause. “To use an older colloquialism.” 

“I don't think it's a colloquialism.” 

Reed sighed. “Then what is it?” 

“Just a saying.” 

Trip placed his hand on the back of Reed's neck and rubbed a finger lightly over his hairline—despite the look that Trip found himself on the receiving end of, he jostled Reed's neck a little and grinned. “We'll be fine.” 

“It's not us I'm worried about, Trip.” 

For a moment Trip didn't quite know how to answer. 

“Well, T'Pol will keep the Captain out of trouble. Most likely.” 

Reed snorted. 

“That's the thing that—” 

Trip, in both interruption and agreement, snorted back at him, making it a little ugly a lot on purpose. Though he grimaced, Trip saw Reed biting down on his bottom lip to stifle a grin. 

“Exactly.”

* * *

The longer it took he and Reed to wend their way through the crumbling remains of the settlement they were originally going to only survey, the more Trip felt it an absolute waste of their time—an entire department of scientists were champing at the bit to get down here, and they would probably be better suited to do the job he and Reed were doing. Trip watched as the scanner in his hand continued to give off readings of no particular value. 

“Well, this is entirely no good.” 

Reed's mild tone seemed discrete from the words actually said—Trip turned to where he had last seen the armory officer, only to find the man missing from the open room. For a moment Trip felt déjà vu—he had been in this building before, knew the purpose of the open areas, generations ago before it had been abandoned. Trip had been here before but it had been so entirely different, it could have very well been another world altogether. 

“You know how I said I dreamt about you?” 

The voice was closer this time, and Trip found himself startled out of his own rumination by Reed popping his head through the open archway preceding the door that separated the building to another via enclosed courtyard. A little dusty and his hair poofed up a titch more than he usually kept it on duty, Reed seemed more befuddled than on the verge of saying something of importance to Trip. 

Without a proper reason, however, it seemed unlikely of Reed to bring up that particular confession out of the blue. Trip said, “Yeah.” It came out just shy of bewildered, and Trip saw Reed quirk his lips up in his more nervous of professional facial tics. 

“Did I mention I was pants at Welsh?” 

“No.” 

“Well now, apparently in the dream you weren't speaking in Welsh.” 

“What was I speaking?” Because this was more up Trip's own weird alley, if his own dream version of Reed was anything to go by. 

Reed answered with a click of his teeth. “I think it best for you to see for yourself.” 

Nodding, Trip grabbed his pack and dutifully followed Reed through the courtyard. It was bigger than Trip had expected it to be, only having had seen it from the panes of the first building they had entered in the compound. 

Though open to the life on the planet—the roofs and structures seemingly more of an invitation to the wildlife than a deterrent—there was a stillness that felt heavy against Trip's breath as they passed through the overgrown foliage. Only their footsteps and their breathing seemed to make any sort of noise—every other sound they made seemed only to be eaten away by the underbrush. After the third time Trip had tried to gain Reed's attention, he instead reached out and tapped his shoulder. 

Reed kept walking.

Trip, then, unwilling to be left behind despite being ignored, continued to dog Reed with the narrow focus he usually reserved for catastrophic engine systems failure—or last season's wild card game that ended with the Dolphins in the playoffs. 

He could still only hear his breath, his inhalation sharper than usual and his exhalation almost rattling as Trip attempted to make whatever noise he could. The light, then, started to dim and though Trip knew it more likely to be a side-effect of him almost hyperventilating he still couldn't help the jolt of adrenaline that came with just one too many things being 'off' on any given away-mission. 

It was getting difficult to see anything more than a meter or so in the front and to the sides of him. Despite the fact that it was an utterly childish action to take, Trip promised himself that he wouldn't look behind him unless it became an absolute necessity. 

The further they strode along the loosely delineated path to the other building Reed had insisted on showing Trip, the more it seemed as though they were being watched. He couldn't actually see any sort of animal activity, but if Reed's quickening pace was an indication as to whether or not Trip was alone in his increasingly uneasy thoughts, the action sealed it.

They got to the door at a quick jog; Reed hustled Trip into the building first, before closing the door behind himself with a reassuring 'thud.' 

“What was—” Trip started to ask, only to be interrupted by Reed. 

“If we had stopped, we wouldn't have made it through.” 

“What?” 

Reed looked up at Trip, his pallor a shade or two lighter than it usually was. “Didn't you get that feeling? If we stopped, we would have been lost.” 

Trip shook his head, mute, with a rising worry pooling in his stomach. 

“It made sense to not slow down.” 

“I get it, it's okay.” He took Reed's statements at an easy face-value, only pursing his lips against the fact that the tactical officer's hands were held in fists against his hips, arms cocked back in a wary pose. 

“It obviously wasn't like that when you walked it the first two times.” 

“Not at all.” He paused. “The encasement's only about twenty square foot.” 

“That's not—” Trip stopped himself. “That can't be right.” 

Reed shrugged. “I took scans,” he said, offering Trip his scanner so he could see for himself. 

Sure enough, the courtyard was pinged at being almost exactly twenty square foot. Trip mutely handed Reed back his scanner, and, at Reed's questioning look, only managed a shrug. 

“I don't know, Malcolm, but something's up with this place.

“Now—” He paused and clapped his hands briskly, the sound echoing through the large, open area of the building they were in. Though he could do absolutely nothing to prove it, Trip had the gut feeling that something here, despite the planet's psychological hostility, would help to explain away all the weirdness that he had been experiencing since first hearing of H60-317F. “What is it you wanted to show me?” 

“Yeah, right through here.” Reed seemed eager to show Trip, and he could only assume that he was going through the same thought processes that Trip was. 

“This is what you were saying in my dream,” Reed stated as they entered what at what appeared to be, at first glance, an ante-chamber of sorts. The gilt inlaid in the walls, however—the centuries of dust almost having had successfully hidden away the painstaking work of a master craftsman—told Trip an entirely different story as to the significance of the compound, and as to this room as an individual object against the collective. 

“Right here,” Reed reiterated, and Trip finally tore his gaze away from the room as a whole and onto a portion of the wall where Reed had obviously wiped away the dust to see the words inscribed underneath the maturation of time. 

There was silence as Trip read through the words once, twice, three times. “What made you dust this off?” 

“I was curious to see what was underneath and it seemed the only sensible place to wipe off.” 

By Reed's tone, it was obvious that the armory officer understood there was nothing sensible in that reaction whatsoever, but Trip found himself nodding along, regardless—despite the incongruity of this entire matter, it made perfect sense to him. 

“This is the same language that you were speaking in my dream,” Trip said after a moment, “and, I think, the once in reality too. You just assumed it was a dream I was having.” 

It took Reed about twice as long to say anything in reply. “Do you think it more likely that things are actually here and we can perceive them for some godforsaken reason, or more likely that there's nothing here whatsoever and we're just having these reactions for some as of yet unknown reason?” 

“Why does it have to be either of those?” Trip replied, and snorted as Reed only shrugged. 

“What'd you think, then?” Reed asked snappishly, twisting his neck back to look at Trip; Reed's arms were held tight against his chest, his left foot bouncing up and down in a nervous tic that made holstering and un-holstering his phase pistol seem manageable. 

“I'm not thinking anything definitive yet,” Trip said, encroaching in on Reed's personal territory with little regard or care that they were technically still on-duty. He placed a hand on the small of Reed's back, stepping in close behind him. “Just that it's weird and more likely than not to do everything with this planet.” 

“Population gone, settlements virtually untouched,” Reed said, nodding a little bit at Trip's statement. He probably didn't even notice, but Trip felt it as Reed's muscles relaxed by a small margin—the physical touch grounded Trip as well. 

“Burgeoning wildlife development and evidence of previous scientific innovation.” 

Reed turned to face Trip fully. “There would have been detectable radiation levels—even now. Beside that, there's no remains.”

“There's almost always something,” Trip agreed. He still couldn't help but feel, however, as though some sort of catastrophic event had decimated whatever species had been living here on H60-317F. 

For a moment it seemed as though Reed were going to answer him. Then, with a push to Trip's shoulder to get him to move, Reed made his way to the adjacent wall. He wiped his hand, gently at first, against the wall; when the grime still refused to be wiped away, he took his sleeve and scrubbed the wall as clean as he could. 

“Malcolm?” 

“More writing.” 

“How did you see it?” Trip asked—his worry ratcheted up a couple of notches when all he got in reply was a careless shrug. 

“I just knew it,” Reed said. 

“k'lath'gh fa dith a-rajet, k'lith'gh fa dith jth-lafth. gth'k'li, k'lath'gh, thg-gth'k'li.” It was difficult, but Trip felt as though he recited it as well as a human tongue could conceivably contort itself into. 

“I really did think it Welsh,” Reed mused, before ghosting his fingers over the inlays in the letters. 

“You also admitted to be shit at Welsh.” 

Trip looked back at the other inscription, the words the same on both. “I wonder if the other two walls match.” 

“There's nothing on them.” The dismissal was sound—Trip looked to Reed, who seemed engrossed in his perusal of the language they had uncovered. He cleared his throat, a little disturbed by the look in Reed's eye as he gazed at the writing. 

“Malcolm, we shouldn't know these things.” 

Reed cocked his head a little before nodding and turning back to Trip. “We shouldn't.” 

“But we do.” 

“Yes, Trip, we do.” A pause. “Though to be fair, it's not much of anything that we actually know.” 

“Just dreams in the language of a long dead, _alien_ civilization.” 

A snort came from Reed, but his wry, 'yes, just that,' at least reassured Trip that he wasn't quite ensnared in the mess—Trip had been worried the armory officer had been becoming exactly that. 

“There really is something about this language, though. God, I wish Hoshi were here to translate some of this.” 

“Really, Malcolm?” Trip was starting to get a mite annoyed with how Reed was acting—he had also been having weird dreams and felt a strange connection with this place they had never been to in their lives, but no one saw Trip completely wigging out at inconvenient times. He was certain that the fault didn't entirely lie with Reed, but he still couldn't help but feel a swell of irritation as Reed continued to speak. 

“k'lath'gh fa dith a-rajet, k'lith'gh fa dith jth-lafth. gth'k'li, k'lath'gh, thg-gth'k'li.”

Trip felt himself shudder a little bit at the way Reed repeated the words; almost reverent in his tone, it took Trip tugging on the sleeve of Reed's away-mission flack jacket for the tactical officer to face him. 

“Let's let Hoshi do the talking with it, okay, Malcolm?” 

Reed blinked once, twice, three times, before seeming to come into himself well enough to give Trip a nod. 

“Yes, quite,” he said. 

A moment passed. Reed, whose hand had been hovering over the wall once more, made its way to where Trip was gripping, tighter now than before, at his arm. 

“We should comm. the Captain and T'Pol,” Reed finally stated. “We can't do it here, though—we'll have to get out of this compound.” 

“And the only unblocked exit is the one we entered through.” 

“Yes.” 

Trip sighed. “Through the courtyard forest that we thought we were going to die in.” 

“Yeah.”

At least Reed didn't seem all that happy about the prospect, either. They shared a grimace then, Reed's hand patting Trip's a couple of times before he tangled them together in lieu of Trip clutching, mostly ineffectual, at his sleeve. Reed's face turned a little red at his own motion and, most likely realizing that they were still on duty—only by virtue of being on planet, but still on-duty nevertheless—dropped his hand to his side faster than Hess could reapply coolant seals. Hess was, for all the glory the unofficial status contained, the fastest hand at the task by over sixteen and a half minutes. 

Buoyed, then, once more by Reed's apropos return to form, Trip felt a little better in suggesting that Reed take the lead in the courtyard again—there, at least, he seemed to have withstood the stillness with a single-minded intensity that Trip knew he couldn't hope to emulate.

* * *

Reed's gait was steady as they made their way, quick, through the enclosed courtyard. Trip's pace was dogged in its determination to keep up, but somehow, he felt, still lacking in its precise execution—it was more than likely something to do with the fact that he kept twitching at every footstep, every crackling of underbrush, or creak of the four buildings encasing them between their walls. At some point between the door and the first five steps taken in the courtyard, Reed had decided to screw official propriety and had taken a firm hold of Trip's hand, a physical anchor to help tote Trip around behind him; with only a shred of evidence—how tightly his hand was currently being held by Reed—Trip decided the anchor was of a mutual benefit. 

The path was darker than before. 

The small light that Reed carried only illuminated a couple of feet in front of him and didn't do anything more for illuminating their three and nines than the natural, ambient light—what little there was of it at this moment—shining in through the canopy top would have. Of course, the light from the canopy should have been substantially more, considering it was the height of the planet's second daily-rotational afternoon, but it would also be entirely unsurprising to Trip if it were due to the civilization had lived here before. 

“This isn't natural,” Trip managed to get out, his throat sticking on his words as though it had been days, and not minutes, since he had last spoken. “The amount of light—the fact that it changes when it shouldn't, and in a way it probably shouldn't.” 

“No, it's not natural whatsoever.” 

And then Reed stopped in his tracks. 

“We should be there by now.” 

Trip felt the exact moment his gut went into free fall. “What?” 

Reed turned to look at him, his face gaunt against the light of the flashlight. Pulling Trip close, he un-holstered his phase pistol and turned out the light. 

“I counted the steps. I gave myself grace, but this is entirely too long.” Reed whispered the words directly into Trip's ear. “Get your phase pistol out.” 

Trip did so, but the weapon didn't help against the sudden, blinding white light that sparked up around them. 

His 'what the _Hell_?' spliced through with Reed's 'fuckin'—bloody _fuck_!' and it was the last things that Trip heard before they fell through the ground.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating change <3

Trip awoke to the dulcet tones of Reed muttering angrily to himself. He couldn't help the small groan he let out as he looked up and, to his grim expectation, saw a completely intact ceiling above them.

“Did I pass out?” he asked, clearing his throat against the sudden dryness that made his question seem like a rasp.

“We both did,” Reed answered, before starting up his muttering again.

Were they in a less precarious situation, Trip would have rolled his eyes. Reed had been twitchy since they had gotten on planet, but Trip hadn't believed the man would actually would go full-blown crazy. He watched as Reed pushed at a section of wall—with a small puff of stale air, a door opened.

“Interesting...” Trip listened as Reed then went off into about four tangents at once, ducking out into the hall for a moment, before turning back to face Trip.

Except Trip still heard Reed, and Reed wasn't speaking.

“Malcolm?” he asked—the spike of unease in his chest as Reed took a few steps closer to him seemed mirrored in Reed's own face as he faltered next to where Trip was sitting.

“What's wrong?” He didn't ask the question as a response to Trip's, but instead as a demand.

“I can hear you.” As they got into conversation, the muttering of Reed's voice in the back of Trip's head had substantially quieted—whether Reed was thinking of less things, or it became background when Trip wasn't thinking about listening to him, he didn't know, but he found he cared less about the minutiae of the matter and more about the fact that he could hear Reed in his head, which was nowhere close to anything he could do before.

“Well, I should hope so—I'd be more worried if you couldn't.” He paused, fixing Trip with a stare. “But that's not what you're talking about, is it?”

“It's not,” Trip said, “It's about the fact that I can hear you when you're not talking.”

“I just thought I was going crazy,” Reed replied, before frowning and adding, “Or maybe that's what _you_ were thinking, and I just thought that I was.”

“Well, I might have definitely thought that,” Trip admitted, tacking on a, “but to be fair, I thought you were muttering to yourself about, like, five different things at once.”

“You do quite the same—I know from first-hand experience.”

Reed then proceeded to help Trip up and checked him over quickly for any injuries he might have missed when he had first woken up. He was worried about Trip, but wasn't willing to do anything more than what was perfunctory—an odd response Reed had that as long as he stayed professional, he would more likely to be able to keep their heads above the metaphorical water.

“Are you focusing on my thoughts?” Reed asked, a small tic in his jaw belying his otherwise cool question.

“Not on purpose,” Trip said. “You can do the same to me, if it'll make you feel better.”

“What would make me feel better,” Reed started, making his way to the still open doorway in order to frown suspiciously into the hall, “is the two of us getting out of here—ideally without errant thoughts in our heads.”

“Maybe it's just a side-effect from where we're at,” Trip suggested, sidling up behind Reed in attempt to see what Reed was staring so intently at down the hallway; there was nothing there, and Trip wondered if he was somehow missing something.

“You're not missing anything—I'm just doing a final once-over before we throw ourselves headfirst into a hallway that leads to only God knows where.”

Trip grimaced—Reed's reaction to Trip reading his thoughts now seemed understandable. Because it was weird.

“Sorry,” Reed offered, every bit as helpless to stop himself as Trip was.

Reed snorted inelegantly.

“You're right,” Trip agreed, “it's harder done than said.”

It could, however, prove to be useful. Both he and Reed hummed an acknowledgment at the thought, and Trip realized that neither quite knew who had the thought in the first place—Trip figured that it didn't matter much, considering that they were of the same mind. Which, considering their current circumstances...

“It takes on an entirely new meaning.”

Trip wouldn't deny that he said the last bit out loud solely in order to determine the level at which he and Reed shared thoughts—he was damn curious as to where the line was drawn, and though he understood that it was most likely not the most apropos time to do so, he couldn't quite help himself.

“It does,” Reed agreed. “And though I share your curiosity, we should probably stick to the task at hand, yeah? We won't meet with the captain and T'Pol until tomorrow, but I don't fancy spending the night searching for a way out.”

“So let's get going?” Trip asked rhetorically, knowing it was either that, or—stand around, a pair of bloody idiots who waited for a sign when faced with an open door, as Reed had thought it.

“Do you have something that—?” Reed started to ask, stopping himself when Trip plucked a marker out of his pocket.

“Good idea,” Trip said, absently wondering why he even bothered to say it out loud—it wasn't as if he and Reed actually needed the verbal confirmation when they could mentally prod at the other one easily enough. But that would be—

“Too weird?” Reed offered up wryly, understanding that his statement, while comedically appropriate, might not have been situationally quite as on the level.

“No, you're good,” Trip disagreed, gesturing for Reed to lead their way out of the room—as though Reed would have let Trip do anything else, because he was a prickly bastard when it came down to it.

“Oh, like you aren't.”

Trip, who couldn't deny it, stayed silent instead as he followed Reed into the hall.

“Look,” Reed said, somehow not at all surprised by the turn of events, “there's only one door.”

The hallway was short, and Reed pulled open the door with minimal effort. It was a little uncanny, and Trip should have been more wary about what was happening—this was, after all, an alien planet that had somehow given him and Reed telepathic abilities—but he felt eerily calm as they started ascending the staircase that a short walk and a sharp corner turned into.

“Well, it can't have been that easy,” Reed said as they re-entered the main building of the settlement that they had been tasked with going through.

“It's been an hour,” Trip said in response to Reed's unasked question. “And I agree—we should get back to the shuttlepod.”

“I'll comm the captain.”

Trip nodded and started gathering their overnight gear back up. He was about halfway through sorting through their items, mind focused mostly on the task at hand, when Reed's irritation managed to actually distract Trip from his task.

“I can't get through to them. I checked with Sato, and it's not on our end—it seems as though the captain and T'Pol are in some ruins that give off a magnetic field. It's not enough interference for the scanners, but quite enough for their communicators.” The professionalism in Reed's words was needle sharp, but Trip was impressed by his restraint considering the absolute tizzy his thoughts were in.

“Jon's not an idiot—he's just...” Trip trailed off and shrugged. “Okay, maybe he's a little bit of an idiot.”

And even if Trip were unable to read Reed's thoughts, the look on his face read 'only a little bit?' so concisely that Trip would have bet on knowing what he was thinking regardless.

* * *

“No, I don't think we should go back,” Reed said idly, shrugging at Trip's silent inquiry.

“You're the one who thinks we can learn more by heading back,” Trip countered, shrugging out of his pack as they finally reached the shuttlepod.

Reed didn't have an answer for that; it didn't take long for Trip to realize that that was just how Reed was—unable to stop thinking about the 'what could's' and 'maybe it would have been better if...'s.'

“Well, I don't think I'm quite as bad as all that.”

“You really sometimes are,” Trip said, keeping his eyes carefully away from Reed's as he sneered into the horizon.

“And don’t get huffy, you know I like it.” 

A burst of annoyance ran through his mind so clearly that Trip swayed a little before he caught himself. “Whoa—Malcolm, try to transfer something else.” He paused. “You’re right, I’ll try.” 

He tried not to smirk as Reed barked out a, ‘dammit, Trip! Bloody fuckin’ wanker,’ as he glared down at his impromptu hard-on. “This is not the sort of thing that we should be experimenting with.” 

“It isn’t?” Trip asked incredulously. 

“Well…” Reed faltered and Trip knew he was just as interested in what was happening with the two of them as Trip was. “Not in a sexual manner, at least.” 

“It’s all we can do without going back to the settlement,” Trip said reasonably. “I don’t even know why you’re bothering to put up a fight—I _know_ it’s a front, because I know what you’re thinking, you perv.” 

A furious blush broke over Reed’s blank expression, but after a few moments of glaring at one another, he finally rolled his eyes and loped closer to where Trip was standing. 

“Let’s get to the pod, shall we?” Reed asked rhetorically, finally resigned to the fact that there wasn’t much work to be done that would be considered safe without backup. “But neither of us are contortionists, so I doubt we’ll be able to hold that position for long.”

* * *

Their trek back to the shuttle was hurried by the slew of dirty imagery Reed was sending directly to Trip—because apparently when given free reign, Reed was a filthy bastard. If Trip hadn’t already been half-deep for Reed already, that would have most definitely sealed the deal. 

“What?” Reed asked. 

“It’s not like you don’t know that,” Trip said, crossing his arms petulantly at Reed’s shock. “We’ve talked about this at least twice.” 

“Yes, well,” Reed replied, backing Trip up until his back hit the pod; Trip would be happy to play prey for Reed if it would devolve into any of the tangents zipping through his mind. “It’s quite different hearing it than intimately knowing it, isn’t it?” 

Reed pressed his forehead against Trip’s own, then, and kept eye contact as he let his own mind wander through his thoughts on Trip. Unable to help himself, Trip let out an ‘oh, fuck’ as his heart started to race, light-headed and a little manic. 

“Get it?” Reed asked rhetorically, hardly waiting for Trip’s nod before he kissed him. And it really was so much different than it had been before, Reed’s own heady determination pinging and igniting against Trip’s own—and who knew a kiss could wreck a person so thoroughly? He wondered how telepathic species could handle it. 

“Can you not—” Reed started and Trip interrupted with a ‘sorry, sorry’ before kissing him once more, nipping at Reed’s bottom lip until it would leave an ache. Which was—

“It’s not kinky.” 

“Liking bruises—in your line of work? Come on.” 

Reed thought something about it being economical, but quickly abandoned that train of thought as he invested most of his focus on licking his way into Trip’s mouth—a little sloppy, just how Trip liked it, and even Reed’s internal crowing couldn’t help the curl in Trip’s toes as Reed sucked on his tongue. He scraped his ragged thumbnail in a line down the back of Reed’s neck just to get the choked-off moan he knew the action would result in. 

“We wouldn’t even have to do much,” Reed said unhurriedly as he pulled back from their kiss. “Could probably come untouched when the other does. It would be a nice experiment, don’t you think? See how far this telepathy goes—very scientific.” 

Trip blinked at Reed and said, “The fact that you can sound so damn conversational when I know you’re thinking of getting down on your knees right here is honestly the hottest thing I’ve experienced in my life.” 

“Oh, darling,” Reed answered, patting at Trip’s cheek before languidly—body pressed fully against Trip’s own—sliding down to his knees as he continued. “I already know that.” 

He untucked Trip’s shirt from his pants and hummed in appreciation as he walked his fingers across his abdomen—Trip’s stomach muscles contracted at the light touch and he huffed out a shaky breath. 

“How delightful,” Reed said, and even if Trip wasn’t privy to Reed’s not-so-private enjoyment, the gleam in his eye would have told him well enough that that information had been stored in Reed’s brain for a later time. 

“I know about every surface on the ship you’ve thought about us fucking on.” 

“I know about every place on Earth you’ve thought the same.” 

Reed’s fingertips skimmed down the fabric covering Trip’s thighs before he pulled up his shirt and placed his mouth against the spot just above Trip’s belt. 

“We should get in the shuttle,” he said, breath hot against Trip’s skin—and if that weren’t enough incentive in itself, Reed then flicked his tongue out for a split-second and already practically ensconced within Reed’s thoughts, Trip could almost taste himself. 

“Fuck,” he whispered, pulling Reed up by his collar to haul him close, his kiss more of a bite than a seduction—Reed’s breath hitched in his throat and Trip took advantage of the momentary distraction to shove off of the side of the pod and hurriedly put in the security code. 

“It’s not a terrible idea, Malcolm, and we won’t _die_ because we weren’t paying attention.” 

Reed’s arms went around him, then, one hand slung low on Trip’s hips and the other wandering over the planes of his chest. 

“If we get surrounded, I’ll let you die first,” was all Reed said as he closed the shuttle bay-door. 

His eyes roamed over Trip’s body and Trip felt Reed’s little thrill of pleasure at looking him up. 

“This is—” he started, words drying in his mouth as Reed, with almost clinical elegance, pulled his shirt over his head; Reed’s hair had become disheveled at the action and Trip’s eyes were drawn to the slight flush of arousal that adorned his shoulders. 

“You’re right, this _is_ weird,” Reed finished for him, a pleased look in his eye despite the awkwardness at suddenly thinking of your own self as terribly attractive simply because the person whose mind you were sharing thought it. 

“When we get settled,” Reed said, stripping Trip out of his shirt with a little more tease than his own—he tugged on Trip’s chest hair and Trip’s hips bucked involuntarily, the slight pain a straight-shot to his cock. 

“You think closing our eyes’ll help?” 

“Yeah.” 

Trip knew that Reed was going to kick his ankle to get him down on the bench but he let him do it, happy to fall onto the slightly padded surface if only so he could pull Reed on top of him. Getting Reed to agree to this professional indiscretion was a lot less work than Trip thought it would be. 

“This has nothing to do with how easy I most certainly am,” Reed disagreed, nosing his way down Trip’s throat until he reached the divot in his left shoulder blade, scraping his teeth against the skin as he continued his perusal. 

“Liar,” Trip said unnecessarily, grinning as Reed shoved him down, his back hitting the bench with an intent that always ensured him a good time. 

“Done this often, have you?” Reed asked snidely—the flash of possession from Reed that shot through Trip made his cock twitch. 

“You’re the one that’s actually jealous,” Trip said in reply to Reed’s smirk as Trip’s arousal bounded back to him. 

“You’re still the one turned on by it.” A pause. “And you don’t hate me, so you can stop thinking that, please and thank you.” 

And it was that, really, that was the end of Trip’s tether; he reared back up before even he could think about what he was doing and crowded Reed against the wall behind the bench, slotting his thigh against Reed’s cock as Trip pressed against his shoulders to keep him pinned. 

“ _Oh_.” The sound was punched out of Reed and for a few startling moments the only thoughts in Trip’s mind were his own. 

They stared at each other for a few long moments as both of their thoughts circled around Reed’s unintended reaction to what Trip had just done. 

“I know you don’t hate me,” Trip said, shifting his thigh against Reed’s cock as he leaned in close—their chests pressed together and Trip shifted one of his hands to curl into Reed’s hair. “This feels mastabuatory.” 

“And like quite a bit of fun, I absolutely agree.”

* * *

Apart from Trip and Reed’s still evening breaths, the shuttlepod was mostly silent. Trip absently fiddled with Reed’s hair as he stared up at the ceiling panels, shivering every now and again as Reed trailed his fingertips over and across his chest. 

Reed was thinking of getting up to get dressed—air out the shuttle so when T’Pol and the captain showed up it wouldn’t be obvious as to what they had been up to—and Trip grunted in disagreement before wrapping an arm around Reed’s stomach. 

“Please—like I can’t easily get out of this,” Reed said, huffing a little even as his thoughts wandered away from doing anything more than enjoying these last few moments they had before focusing in on the job once more. 

“Go ahead, then,” Trip replied, tightening his grip on Reed. 

“I’m not going to,” Reed said unnecessarily, turning his face towards Trip’s to kiss him—Trip hummed a little into Reed’s mouth as a tendril of pleasure started to sweep itself once more down his body. Reed’s own burgeoning arousal was filtering through his mind, and really, if this sort of thing had happened a decade ago Trip might have been able to get it up again easily. As it stood—or didn’t stand, as the case was—it would take awhile for his body to follow where his mind already was. 

Reed laughed into his mouth but tried to stifle it when he pulled away from the kiss. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, but proceeded to shake into Trip’s shoulder as he continued laughing; Reed snorted a couple of times and Trip tried desperately to think of the sound as ugly. “Oh, don’t be like that, darling—I’m in the same boat, you know.” 

“Yeah, but that’s because you’re an old man.” 

“Yes, those four years I have on you are truly the tipping point.” 

Reed’s mind went curiously blank, then, and Trip’s eyes narrowed in suspicion a second before Reed slipped from his grip and rolled off the bench, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned—naked with bruises on his hips and shoulders, still a little sweaty and flushed—against one of the chairs. He preened a little at Trip’s obvious interest. 

“I’m terribly enfeebled, as you can tell,” Reed finished, glancing over the shuttlepod in distaste as he tried to locate his trousers—his pants, if nothing else. 

“Stop making me think like a Brit,” Trip accused, throwing Reed his underwear from where they had migrated to the corner. 

“Living in San Fran-fucking-cisco has made me think like an American, so I suppose turnabout’s fair play, ‘uh?” 

The comm chimed before Trip could reply and Reed strode over to fish it out of Trip’s pocket, flinging his pants over to him afterwards. 

“Reed here.” 

There was silence for a moment before Archer’s reply of, “I was expecting Trip.” 

“Yes, well,” Reed said, “He's here too.

“What did you comm. about, captain?” 

“T’Pol and I are headed back to the shuttle—there’s no point in hanging around here anymore, it’s basically just ruins. And what we did find? Can’t translate.” 

“What’s your ETA?” Reed asked, raising his eyebrows at Trip to get him to start moving. “Commander Tucker and I are already back—we’ve found more than the two of you it seems, but it was in neither of our best interests to stay at the settlement.” 

“About half an hour,” Archer replied before asking, “Is something wrong?” 

“Nah,” Trip said, stretching out his back as he stood from the bench—and if Trip took a little longer than usual to stretch out, enjoying the way Reed’s thoughts zeroed in on his body, than it was no one’s business but his own and Reed’s. “But it’s definitely something unexpected.” 

Archer’s, ‘Echo—over and out,’ sounded resigned, as though Trip and Reed were the ones to get into the most trouble on away missions, as opposed to their cowboy of a captain. 

“We _are_ in the running for disastrous happenings, though,” Reed said as he pulled on his briefs. 

Reed’s pants were halfway up his thighs when Trip found himself walking over and stopping his progress. 

“What?” Reed asked, before quirking his lips up in a bemused smile as Trip finished doing up his pants with gentle efficiency. “Oh, so it’s like that, is it?” 

“Shut up,” Trip muttered, flushing a little as he started doing up his own pants. 

“I personally think it’s quite charming.” Reed spoke as though Trip had said nothing at all, as though Trip weren’t vaguely embarrassed by this particular wont of his. “Domesticity suits your personality—I haven’t a clue as to what you’re embarrassed for.” 

“Oh my God,” Trip said, “I cannot wait until the captain and T’Pol get back and get you out of my head.” 

“Well it’s a good thing I can tell that you’re lying, innit? Otherwise I’d be insulted.” Reed was cross, regardless, and his irritation bled through into Trip despite Reed trying to wall him out. 

“I don’t think humans are capable of that,” Trip pointed out, trying not to take personal offence at Reed’s snapped reply of, ‘Don’t you think I know that?’

Trip was annoyed, Reed was annoyed, and they were falling into and out of each other’s annoyance because they were telepathically fucking connected due to some sort of idiotic ancient alien civilization. It was a stupid, batshit situation and he hated and loved it, and Reed felt the same, and it was maddening—knowing what he shouldn’t and feeling like it was a part of himself. 

“Okay,” Reed said out loud—Trip was barely able to hear him over the cacophony between their two minds. “Okay, Trip, just—”

Reed’s forehead was pressed against his own, then, and Trip closed his eyes. 

They stood there for a moment, one of Reed’s hands clutching at his shoulder and the other wrapped in his hair. “We need to finish getting dressed.” 

Trip nodded and said, “Air out the shuttle,” before pressing a teasing kiss to Reed’s lips.

“And sort this whole mess out,” Reed finished for him. 

He took Trip’s shirt from the floor and waited for him to put his arms up. 

“Malcolm,” Trip protested even as he lifted his arms, “you don’t have to—”

“Oh, just let me do this for you,” Reed replied, a rush of fondness swirling through his veins before pushing into Trip’s own. 

He pulled the shirt over Trip’s head, tucking it in to his specifications before starting to fix Trip’s hair. 

“Not going to help much, is it?” he asked rhetorically, sucking his tongue against his teeth as he gave Trip’s hair one last ineffectual tug. 

“Nope,” Trip said, reaching for Reed’s shirt as he manhandled his arms the way he needed to. When the shirt was on, he picked at the collar for a few moments before stepping back to admire the aura of slight dishevelment that Reed still invoked. 

“I’m not keeping it untucked just because you like it.” 

“But you are,” Trip disagreed. 

“I’m—” Reed paused as Trip thought about all the things he could covertly do to him with his shirt loose. “Fine.” 

“Don’t sound put-out, I know I’m not exactly pulling teeth here,” Trip said, tugging on Reed’s belt loop before walking over to the hatch door, swaying his hips as best he could as Reed focused in on his ass. 

“Tease,” Reed said, following Trip to crowd him against the wall. Trip grinned and tugged on the hem of Reed’s shirt—Reed opened the hatch with half a mind, because it apparently wouldn’t do should they forget their timeliness—to bring him into another kiss. 

Trip knew the moment Reed understood the benefits of an untucked shirt, the full-body twitch as Trip’s hand traced slowly up his spine, and Trip moaned a little as the sensation bounced back to him. Despite his earlier words, Trip might not mind being linked to Reed for a while longer yet. 

“Yeah,” Reed agreed against his lips—Trip couldn’t help the flashbang of desire at Reed’s ill-advised thought as to not saying anything at all; Reed shook his head at their foolishness. 

“You know, Trip, when I said that you two had a rapport, I didn’t actually think it went _this_ far.” 

A sort of vague horror flooded Trip’s mind and he honestly could not tell if it came from Reed or himself. 

“I thought you said you’d be a half an hour,” Trip said stupidly, and even then only when it became clear that no one else was going to speak. 

“I’ve never been able to sneak up on Malcolm, wanted to try my luck,” Archer replied easily, as though he ran into two heads of departments making out as a matter of course. 

It must have been his name that snapped Reed out of his stupor, as he quickly pulled away from Trip—despite the not-so-apropos situation, Trip couldn’t help his grimace of distaste at the feeling of Reed’s body leaving his. 

“Yes, well, um,” Reed started, hovering on about a million ways to continue his statement before settling weakly on, “Good job, then, captain.” 

“I’m assuming, though, that this isn’t the unexpected thing you found.” Archer paused as Trip snorted out a laugh. “Unless you were speaking in metaphor, in which case—congratulations.” 

“Did you and Lieutenant Reed have sexual relations in the shuttlepod?” 

“Why would you even ask a question that you already know the answer to, T’Pol?” Trip asked brightly over Reed’s ‘oh my God.’ 

“And to answer _your_ question, captain,” he continued to Archer, leading them back out into the open—give Reed a few more moments to quietly freak out before he had to break out his erstwhile professionalism—as he spoke, “Lieutenant Reed and I managed to accidentally give ourselves telepathic abilities.” Trip paused and chose deliberately not to turn around to face Reed when he asked, “Right, Malcolm?” 

“From what little we’ve managed to gather,” Reed answered, nodding at Archer and T’Pol as though he hadn’t just been caught in an entirely compromising position. He rolled his eyes at Trip’s back. 

“I’m not a show-off,” Trip said, “I’m only demonstrating.” 

“Can you read everyone’s thoughts?” Archer asked, narrowing his eyes at Trip as though he were thinking about something very hard. 

“No,” Trip replied, “and thank God for that.” 

“Detail the situation,” T’Pol said before, Trip was sure, any of them could get further off-course. 

“It started about a week ago, with a series of dreams that it seems as though Trip and I shared…”

* * *

“Well, we obviously have to go back there.” 

Archer had been silent for almost a full minute after he and Reed had thoroughly explained themselves, stepping on one another’s toes as they both tried to determine what had been said aloud and what had only been shared between the two of them. T’Pol’s eyebrow twitched whenever they answered questions that hadn’t been asked, or finished a thought that the other had started—if Trip didn’t know better, he might have thought her jealous. 

“Of course,” Reed agreed easily. “But I believe it to be best to wait until the morning.” 

“Sound plan,” Archer said, nodding at the three of them decisively. “Let’s set up camp.” He paused, then, and grinned at Trip. “Can I trust you and Lieutenant Reed to share a tent? We only brought three, but I can share with you instead if you want.” 

Trip was barely able to stop himself from telling Archer _exactly_ what would happen if he and Reed were put together in a tent for a night, and even then it was only because Reed was planning on denying Trip even a kiss should he reply with anything other than perfect professionalism. 

“We’ll be fine, captain,” Trip said. “But thanks for the consideration.” 

He glared at Reed, who flashed his teeth at him in reply—a predatory smile that had Trip stumbling over his own thoughts; Reed, the bastard, was smug about it too. 

“You know,” Archer said, glancing between Trip and Reed in what Trip could only assume to be resignation, “If we can’t do anything about this telepathy, it might be useful for mission work.” He paused. “Terrible for around the ship, but useful if one of you gets captured.” 

“Humans are not meant for this sort of connection,” T’Pol said as she started to unroll her tent. “There is a likely chance either one or both of you will experience side-effects. It would be unwise to determine any future actions based solely on your newfound telepathic abilities.” 

“We’ll deal with that if it comes to it,” Reed replied for the both of them. “We don’t even know if it’ll last.” 

And Trip shouldn’t have been happy at the slight disappointment emanating from Reed, but he was—and at least neither of them were alone in maybe wanting to keep this weird connection to one another. 

“So you’ve been speaking this language for almost a week now?” Archer asked when it became apparent that the silence would continue through the entirety of setting-up camp. “Why didn’t you say anything?” 

“We thought it was weird dreams—not something you go to your captain to,” Trip said before shoving the tent poles towards Reed.

“If you don’t think I’m setting it up right, you can do it.” 

Archer sighed and said, “That’s really strange.” 

“Imagine it actually happening to you,” Trip replied, arms crossed as he watched Reed easily set up the tent. 

“God, you’re annoying.” 

“I’ll set up a perimeter, captain,” Reed said, choosing to ignore Trip entirely. “I doubt it will be necessary, but there’s always a chance something might pop up in the night.” His ‘they usually do’ went unsaid, but Trip felt as though even Archer—who was decidedly not privy to Reed’s inner thoughts—would be able to pick up on it.

**Author's Note:**

> xoxo


End file.
